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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28033116">A Symbol of Kingship</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverInk/pseuds/SilverInk'>SilverInk</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mummy Series</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adventure, Ancient History, Celtic Mythology &amp; Folklore, F/M, Family, Historical References, Mummies, Plot, Yuletide</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:35:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,800</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28033116</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverInk/pseuds/SilverInk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Why are we going to Ireland again, Evie?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“My aunt Alice has something she needs to show me. A small collection of artifacts from an ancient Celtic tribe.” Rick raised an eyebrow, and Evie grinned, caught up in remembering how her aunt had described it in her letter. She lowered her voice in excitement as she explained...</em>
</p><p>Or, Rick and Evie go to Ireland to investigate ancient Celtic artifacts, and find a little more than they bargained for.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Evy Carnahan O'Connell/Rick O'Connell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Symbol of Kingship</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/russian_blue/gifts">russian_blue</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Wishing you a very happy Yuletide, russian_blue! </p><p>I had a look through some of the other gifts you've gotten for this fandom and I saw there were several other stories about bog bodies, but they're so fascinating to me I just had to write another one! Hope you enjoy it!! :D</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <em> <span class="s1"> <b>Ireland, Early Autumn, 2000 BCE:</b> </span> </em>
</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The harvest was going bad, for the third year in a row. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Nuallán, the king of the Menapii tribe, had neglected to make sacrifices for a long time. But now, he began to spend many nights praying for the gods’ favor and help ruling his tribe, kneeling by the edge of the sacred bog that was the gateway to the world of the gods. Growing ever more agitated and frustrated as the days went on, he finally made a sacrifice, dropping objects of precious jewelry that were the most important to him into the muddy waters of the bog. First he sacrificed his heavy bracelet engraved with swirling patterns and knots, then one by one his three rings, and finally his twisted torc necklace which had a pair of hounds decorating the finials. The torc was the most important to him, a symbol of kingship, and it was that which caught the gods’ attention. It was one of his first sacrifices in many, many months, but the finery of it seemed to appease the gods. The next day, it rained, the first rain in weeks.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">And that night, the gods spoke to Nuallán through a dream. The goddess of war and fate, Morrighan, stood in a clearing in a forest, shrouded in mist, and told him of the immense power the bracelet, rings, and torc now held. They had been touched by the gods, and if they were recovered from the bog, they would make Nuallán immensely powerful as well; Morrighan would help him, and make him a powerful and feared ruler.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">As soon as the king woke from this dream, in the soft light just before dawn, before almost anyone else was up, he felt a feverish sense of urgency to retrieve the jewelry. With the goddess Morrighan’s words of power still in his ears, he went back to the bog, hoping desperately that he could dig up the jewelry again. But before he could even start searching, three men, including a Druid of the tribe, approached him. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The harvest had been bad for three years in a row, and rain had been scarce. The Druid believed that must mean the gods were displeased with their king and were punishing the tribe, and no matter how hard Nuallán tried to convince him otherwise, the Druid could not be persuaded. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Nuallán had brought misfortune to the people of the Menapii tribe, and all the Druids of the tribe knew that the only way to appease the gods and make the suffering stop, was to offer the king who had displeased them as a sacrifice. And so that same evening, in the red and gold light of the sunset, the Druids made prayers and in front of the people of the tribe, slit the throat of the former ruler, and laid his body in the sacred bog as a sacrifice to the gods, marking the place with sticks in the ground. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">None of them had any idea of the jewelry, now imbued with the power of the gods, that still lay at the bottom of the bog…</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <em> <span class="s1"> <b>England, Late Summer, 1928 CE:</b> </span> </em>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Why are we going to Ireland again, Evie?” Rick shouted from the bedroom where he was still packing their bags.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“My aunt Alice has something she needs to show me,” Evie called back. She came back into the room with both their toiletry bags packed. “It’s a small collection of artifacts from an ancient Celtic tribe.” Rick raised an eyebrow, and Evie grinned, caught up in remembering how her aunt had described it in her letter. She lowered her voice in excitement as she explained: “It’s a collection of ancient jewelry—three jeweled rings and an engraved cuff bracelet. They were found in a bog that was believed to have been sacred to the ancient Celts. They would make sacrifices to their gods by placing votive offerings such as jewelry or other objects in the water in hopes that it would gain them the gods’ favor.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“So you know about the ancient Celts, too, not just the Egyptians?” He gave her a soft look, impressed.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Well, only a little,” Evie shrugged, grinning a little. “Most of it is what I’ve learned from her over the years.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Why does she need you to see them? I mean, no offense, but it’s not exactly your area.”</span>
</p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“</span><span class="s1">My aunt wants the collection to be studied thoroughly, so I’ve brought it to the attention of the Bembridge Scholars, who are </span> <span class="s1">very eager to see it and study it properly. And, I haven’t seen Aunt Alice, or my uncle, Joseph, in ages. I also haven’t introduced them to you yet,” she added. She and Rick had been married for several months now, after a wedding in Egypt, but she had yet to introduce him to many of her relatives, including her aunt and uncle.</span></p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I’d love to meet more of your family, Evie,” Rick said. “Just promise me they’re not all like Jonathan, though, ok?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Laughing, Evie pulled him closer to kiss him. “No, they’re not all like Jonathan.” Then a little more seriously, “They’re both historians though, I will warn you. They will talk your ears off about the Celts or the Romans if you give them the chance. So I suppose they’re a little more like me, then.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“That, I can handle,” Rick said, and kissed her again. “If they’re like you, I’m sure they’ll be great.”</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">***</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When they arrived in Ireland early that evening, her aunt and uncle met them at the airport. Evie hugged them, excited to see them after so long, and introduced them to Rick. After only a few minutes of talking, she was pleased to see that they seemed to like each other already. As they drove, her aunt and uncle asked about Rick and Evie’s wedding, and they kept the conversation away from any topics related to their work and the reason Rick and Evie were here. Her aunt and uncle talked about their new hobbies, asked Rick about himself, and asked about Jonathan. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It was nice to catch up and let her relatives and her husband get to know each other, and when they reached her aunt and uncle’s house out in the countryside, Uncle Joseph told Evie, “He seems like a wonderful man, my dear. I’m happy for you.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Beaming, Evie hugged him and kissed him on the cheek.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When she caught up to Rick, she grabbed his hand. “They like you already.”</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">***</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Evie and Rick took a moment to rest and clean up in the guest room that had been set up for them, and then went downstairs again for dinner. They all continued to talk, and Evie felt pleasantly full, happy, and slightly tired. She was glad this meeting between her family and her husband was going so well, and she was happy to see her aunt and uncle again. Eventually, toward the end of the meal, the real reason they had come was discussed.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Is there anything you all want to do tomorrow?” Evie asked. “I have a few things I forgot to pack that I’d like to go buy...”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I can go with you,” Aunt Alice offered. “But, I also have quite a bit to do for work, with the excavation and the jewelry that’s already been found there.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Oh, how exciting! I’ve been so looking forward to seeing the collection.” Evie was immediately more awake in her eagerness. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“It is a beautiful collection,” Aunt Alice beamed. “I hope it will lead to more discoveries of other sacrifices in the same bog, which is seeming very likely.” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">There was a pause. “If you’re not too worn out, I could show it to you now, if you like,” she offered, and Evie’s heart leapt in excitement. Now she hardly felt tired at all from her afternoon of traveling.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yes, please.” She looked over to Rick, who grinned back at her. “We’re not tired yet.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Aunt Alice grinned too, looking between the two of them, and stood up. They cleared the dishes off the table, and then Alice drove Evie and Rick a short way to the museum where the jewelry was being kept, and where Alice worked. It was a small museum in the nearby town of Cashel, and she took them to a basement room where the artifacts could be restored and were housed when not on display. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She lead Evie, with Rick behind her, to the back of the restoration room and toward a set of numbered wooden drawers. She selected one seemingly at random and opened it using a key from the key ring in her pocket, and inside, padded with white cloth, sat the bracelet and rings. They were a little battered, but they almost seemed to glow with the life and beauty of a bygone age…</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Oh, they’re beautiful!” Evie murmured, awed.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The bracelet was a heavy cuff engraved with swirling Celtic knots and patterns, and two of the rings each had a large jewel set into them and the other had several smaller jewels. They all looked well preserved but absolutely ancient, and Evie was enthralled. Her aunt handed her a pair of soft cloth gloves that the restorers used to handle artifacts, and she quickly slipped them on before lifting the cuff bracelet out of its drawer and looking at it more closely. It was mostly clean, but it was somewhat scratched and had traces of mud still in some of the engraving. The rings were the same, but hopefully the rest of the mud could be cleaned out during restoration.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“They were found in one of the bogs a few miles away,” Alice said. “They are probably from some kind of sacrifice to the Celtic gods, which means there are very likely many more similar artifacts in that same bog.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Evie nodded, fascinated. As tired as she was from traveling, she almost couldn’t wait to go to the site where these beautiful artifacts had been found and see it herself. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You’ll probably want to check that out, right?” Rick asked, and he knew her so <em>well</em>. She nodded again eagerly.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yes, I’d love to see it, if that’s at all possible,” she said, partly to Rick, partly as a question to her aunt.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Of course!” Her aunt beamed, even more excited than Evie was. “As I said, I was planning to go to the site tomorrow, and I can bring you along if you’d like.”</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">***</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">After they returned to Evie’s aunt and uncle’s house, they said goodnight and went to bed in the guest room, now exhausted after the day of travel, and Evie cuddled close to Rick under the covers. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Are you coming with me to the archaeological site tomorrow?” Evie asked, attempting to hide a yawn in the crook of her arm.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yeah of course.” Rick kissed her cheek, and she grinned. “Someone’s gotta make sure you stay safe.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Oh, Rick, it’ll be perfectly safe!” She swatted his arm lightly. “No harm ever came from visiting a dig site. We’ll barely be doing anything.” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she giggled, kissing him. “Goodnight, Mr. O’Connell.”</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">***</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">They went to the excavation site the next morning and ended up staying most of the afternoon, too. Fascinated, Evie wished she could do some of the actual digging, but she didn’t want to disturb the team of archaeologists working there. Over the course of the day, they found a few small items, all little sacrifices to the gods, but other than that it seemed to be a fairly uneventful day.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">But, soon after they’d had their lunch break, one of the archaeologists suddenly shouted that she’d found something. She was digging at the site where the first pieces of jewelry were found, in a hole that was growing deeper and deeper, and Evie and her aunt exchanged excited looks. Evie grabbed Rick’s wrist tightly and tugged him with her as she followed Alice to see what had been discovered.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Ow, Evie—” he protested halfheartedly, but grinned when she turned to look at him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Sorry about that,” she grinned back, but she didn’t quite hear his reply, because at that moment one of the archaeologists was handing something up to Alice. She spoke to the team for a few minutes, all of them eager and excited, and then she turned to Evie. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I believe it’s a torc, a necklace worn by ancient rulers as a symbol of kingship and high status.” Alice carefully brushed the peat mud off of the thin object, which nearly formed a circle in her hands. As she cleaned it, Evie could see some of the design of it a little more clearly. It was made of pieces of metal twisted around each other, and there was some design on the finials that she couldn’t quite make out. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Oh, how marvelous. Isn’t it, Rick?” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yeah, marvelous.” </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She giggled a little, and reached to take it carefully from her aunt. As she touched the cold, still-muddy metal, she felt the earth under them start to shake, and heard a low, moaning roar that seemed to come from nowhere.</span>
</p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1">Evie gasped and reached for Rick with her free hand that wasn’t holding the torc. The ground shook again, and farther out toward the middle of the bog, away from the group digging at the edge of it, something seemed to be growing out of the mud. A few endlessly long moments later, Evie’s stomach dropped as a shape emerged from it, dragging itself toward them before standing up and walking a little drunkenly. It looked a little like a human—<em>a human who was long dead, and caked in mud</em>—and it roared loudly again, the force of it almost knocking Evie and Rick and the few others who hadn’t fled, onto the ground. </span>
</p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1">Evie turned to look at Rick next to her; his eyes were huge and wide in his face, and his mouth dropped open, clearly just as shocked and alarmed as she felt. When he met her eyes, they said very fervently, in perfect unison: “Oh, <em>no</em>.”</span>
</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1">***</span>
</p><p class="p4"> </p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1">“So—do those things just follow us around now?” Rick asked as they boarded the plane back to England. </span>
</p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1">Evie laughed a little hysterically. “What, mummies? I certainly hope not. We’ll never be able to go on holiday again.”</span>
</p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1">“We can still go on holidays, just not anywhere that has any kind of ancient preserved bodies. We’ll have to start doing a lot more research before we go anywhere, though. Unless we decide we <em>want</em> to fight a mummy.” There was a pause as they put their bags away and took their seats. “It makes me feel a lot better that you always seem to know what to do, though,” he grinned, and Evie grinned too; his joking made her feel better, though it was hardly true that she’d known what to do.</span>
</p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1">“Well, this time my aunt helped quite a bit.”</span>
</p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1">Once she’d gotten over the fact that there was an undead bog body trying to kill them and take over the world, Aunt Alice had been very helpful. She said the mummy was likely a king of one of the ancient tribes, who had been held responsible for some misfortune that befell the tribe and was killed as a sacrifice to appease the gods and end the people’s suffering. She also believed that the torc belonged to this ancient king, and she thought the other jewelry likely did as well.</span>
</p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1">“She really did. I’m glad you were both there, because you were the one who figured out what brought him back and how to kill him.”</span>
</p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1">Evie smiled. It had been easy, really. The mummy had come to life as soon as the last of the jewelry had been recovered, which made Evie wonder if that was the key to killing him as well. The bog body had mostly stayed in the area where they found him, trying to gain strength and regenerate by chanting in an ancient language Evie didn’t understand, and Rick had had to distract him while Evie and her aunt reburied the jewelry. Alice mourned a little for the loss of the artifacts, but it was far more important to destroy the undead mummy than to keep them, so she had helped Evie dig a deep hole, throw the jewelry in, and fill the hole back up. Once it was done, Rick was able to stab the mummy and kill him, and then they had to dig another hole to rebury him. The three of them went back to the house muddy, but triumphant.</span>
</p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1">“Now I’ll just have to figure out what to tell the Bembridge Scholars about why I can’t give them the ancient Celtic jewelry I promised them…”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The mummy they resurrect is meant to be "Cashel Man," a bog body discovered in County Laois in Ireland in 2011. His head was damaged when he was found so it isn't known exactly how he died, and far as I know, there was no jewelry found with him; I just took a bit of creative license with those aspects!</p><p>Also, because I'm a history nerd, here are some resources I found on bog bodies and “Cashel Man”:</p><p>https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/laois-bog-body-said-to-be-world-s-oldest-1.1483171</p><p>https://www.claddaghdesign.com/history/ireland-bog-bodies/</p><p>https://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/news/news-not-bog-standard.htm</p></blockquote></div></div>
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